


two hundred years ago

by fardareismai



Series: Imagine Claire and Jamie (Prompts from the blog that I have fulfilled) [19]
Category: Outlander (TV), Outlander Series - Diana Gabaldon
Genre: F/M, Family Feels, Ficlets, Gen, classic fairy tales, fairy tale AU, multiple short stories, scottish fairy tales
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-11-23
Updated: 2016-01-05
Packaged: 2018-05-03 01:38:20
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 7
Words: 4,942
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5271704
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/fardareismai/pseuds/fardareismai
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A series of Fairy Tale AUs I've written for the imagineclaireandjamie blog on Tumblr.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Imagine a bedtime story (stories?) that Claire might have used to tell little Bree of Jamie.

“It was two-hundred years ago,” I began.  It is always two-hundred years in the old tales.

“There is a creature that lives on the coasts of Scotland.  In English they are called seals, but in Scots they are called silkies.  Silkies are magic creatures.  Most of the time they look like sleek water-dwellers, but they can change.  They can remove their silkie skin and walk the shore like men and women.  They’re very beautiful when they are people, and the humans love them very much.  If you find a silkie skin, you can keep it and that silkie will be tied to you for all of her days- she will be your wife and the mother of your children, and she will cook and clean and care for you.

“And so, there was a silkie woman, two hundred years ago.  She had a life in the sea- a husband who was, like her, a silkie, but she took off her skin one day to walk on the land, and when she went to look for it, she could not find it, and so she was forced to remain there, for all she wanted to return to the sea and all of the things she knew, and her husband, and her life.

“The silkie woman met a man, however.  A man nearly as beautiful as the silkie men, with red hair and beautiful blue eyes, just like yours my darling.  He protected her when she did not know how to live on the land and cared for her as she was so very afraid.  He fell in love with her and she, in spite of her silkie husband in the sea, fell in love with him back.

“But the day came that she was forced to tell him the truth- that she was a silkie who belonged in the sea, but that she did not have her skin to return to the sea.  Without telling her, he found her skin and offered her a choice- to return to the sea and her husband and all of the things she knew, or to stay with him in the air and never swim again, for if you burn the skin of a silkie, she can never return to the sea.

“The silkie did love him so that she chose to stay and asked him to burn her skin.  And they lived together happy for a long time.

“But then war came to the world of the land, and the red-haired man was forced to fight.  But he did love his silkie wife so much that he wanted to keep her and the baby that she was to bear him safe, so he gave her back her skin, which he had kept without telling her, and told her to go back to the water and her silkie husband, where she would be safe.

“But it is the curse of the silkies that they can never return to their husbands on land once they have gone back to the sea.  And so the silkie wife wishes for her red-haired husband from the land, even though she is back in the world to which she was born.”

I looked down at the tiny, pink face against the white pillow on her cot.  She’d fallen asleep within moments of my starting, but I had to finish the story.

I always did.

“But you are worth it, my darling.  You always will be.”


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Hey so, I was wondering if you could do one where Bree's a little girl, playing with her toys and Claire hears her talking to someone and walks in and asks who she's talking to and she pretty much gives a funny description of Jamie? Thanks! You guys are awesome :)

“It was two hundred years ago,” her mother began.  It’s always two hundred years in the old stories.  

Her father began stories with “once upon a time” but her mother always began them with two hundred years.

“A woman was walking along the edge of a vast lake when she saw a horse.  It was the most beautiful horse she’d ever seen with hair as red as yours, and eyes just as blue.

“That woman had heard the stories all her life, but she had never believed them and so she touched the horse.  She couldn’t seem to help herself.

“If you meet a horse on the edge of a lake, do not touch it, for it could be a water horse, and if it is you will never be able to let go and it will carry you down to its home in the bottom of the lake, my darling, and there you will have to stay as its wife.

“So, all-unknowing, the woman sealed her own fate and was dragged to the bottom of the lake to live.  And there were no hot baths, and there was no chocolate-”

“No chocolate?”

“Not a bite.”

“What did she eat then?”

Her mother gave a sad smile.  “Quite a lot of herring, actually.”

“What’s herring?”

“It’s a little fish.  Sometimes people pickle it.”

“Eew.”

“Well it wasn’t all bad.  The water-horse was beautiful and kind and he made the bottom of the lake as comfortable as possible for her.  And, when he saw that she was sad, he asked his wife if she wanted to return to the dry world above.  But she had come to love him, and so she stayed with him, sharing their herring.

“They lived together happy for a time, but then the woman was going to have a baby, and babies can’t be born at the bottom of a lake.  Babies need to be kept warm and dry and safe.  They need to eat things besides herring.  So the water horse took his wife back to the dry world to have their baby.

“Then did she go back?”

“No.  You can only touch a water horse once.  So the woman, even though she was in the world of hot baths and chocolate was sad for she would never see her water horse husband again.  But she had her baby to remember him, and her baby had red hair and blue eyes, like he did.”

“Like I do!”

“Yes, my darling.  Like you do.  And the woman was happy that her baby was warm and dry and had all the chocolate she could want.”

“I’m sorry for the poor water horse though.”

“Me too, my darling.  Me too.  Go to sleep now.”

~?~?~?~?~

Brianna looked up from where she was playing with her dolls.  She had known he was there before she saw him.

He was a tall man, and he should have looked funny because he appeared to be wearing a skirt, but she did not laugh because his eyes were so sad.

She’d seen him before.  He wasn’t always there, but sometimes, when she was alone, he would appear.  She had tried to talk to him, but either he couldn’t hear her, or he wasn’t listening because he never responded, he just watched her with those sad, sad eyes.

For some reason, he always reminded her of her mother’s stories of the silkies and the kelpies- when their wife left them, she thought their eyes must be sad like his.

In her father’s stories, the lovers always ended up together.  Not in her mother’s stories though.

“I hope she comes back to you,” she said to him.  “And I hope you both live happily ever after.


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Imagine Bree and Jenny having a conversation (either post-MOBY or in DoA) where Jenny asks her niece about her childhood and comes to realise just how much Claire missed Jamie during their separation.

“It was two hundred years ago,” she remembered.  It was always two hundred years in the old stories.

“It was a dark night when the party went riding between the two towns.  They should have known better, for the mist was in and the footing was perilous, and the horses could feel that something was not right in the air.

“The woman wanted to go, however, and as they were taking her to her wedding, the men with her felt that they could not deny her.

“They couldn’t call themselves surprised, however, when her horse fell on the pitted and dangerous track.  The horse was well enough, but they could not find the woman anywhere.

“The woman had been stolen by the king of the faeries to be a bride for his son, taken nearly from her new husband’s bed.  The woman resisted and resisted, for the faerie world was strange to her.  

“The prince of the faeries was a kind man.  He apologized to her for his father’s chicanery and tried his best to make the human woman happy, for he loved her very much and wanted her for his bride.

“On the night before their wedding, he offered her a bride’s gift: he would take her back to the human world and the man who was to be her husband, and he would protect her from his father’s attempts to get her back.  She was free if she wanted to be.

“The woman considered her options- the man she had known and loved, and the life that she had always intended to live, or the faerie world, and this man who had been so kind and good to her.  She realized that she had fallen in love with the Prince of the Faeries, and she chose him and they were married the following day.

“After a time, the time came for the faeries to pay the teind- the tithe to Hell.  The faerie prince’s wife was pregnant with their first child and the wicked king of the faeries  knew that if she and the babe were given to Hell, the kingdom would be free of the tithe for a hundred years, the soul of an innocent babe being worth a hundred sinful souls.

“The prince knew what his father had in mind and he smuggled his wife and their child unborn out of faerie and put a spell on her that none of the Auld Ones would ever be able to touch her again, even though he knew it meant he would never see her again.”

“Why do you never tell stories with happy endings, Mama?”

“It does have a happy ending, my darling.  There are so many different kinds of love, and they gave up one for another.  Love of each other for the love of a child.”

“But children grow up and move away, and then the faerie prince’s wife will be alone without anyone.”

“Perhaps.  But some things are worth the cost.  Sleep now, my darling girl.”

~?~?~?~?~

Briana sat beside her aunt Jenny on the porch of the new big house.

“She never told a story with a happy ending.  Not my entire life.  They always had to live apart for love of their child, and they always pined.”

Claire and Jamie were standing at the mouth of the trail, talking to one another.  Claire’s face was tipped up to Jamie’s and the glow of her smile could be seen from across the distance.

“Faerie tales should have happy endings, shouldn’t they, Aunt Jenny?”

“Aye,” she said, softly, watching her brother.  Contentment radiated from every line of his body.  “Aye, love should conquer and everyone should live happily ever after.  It doesna happen so often in real life, but sometimes it does.”


	4. Chapter 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Mandy takes to Claire easily, but is deathly afraid of Jamie.

Brianna rocked her daughter to the rhythm of the electronic shrieks of the hospital.

“It was two hundred years ago,” she said, if only to block out the noise.  It’s always two hundred years in the old stories.

“There was a woman then, two hundred years ago, and she was a bonnie thing, with skin like pearls and hair the colour of the water in a peat burn, dark and light and wavy over the stones and eyes like a hawk- golden and fierce.

“For all that she was beautiful, and men loved to look at her, no one really understood her for women then were meant to be quiet and gentle and to say little and do as they were bid.  This woman was none of those things.  She was stubborn and clever and spoke her mind, even when it made people angry.

“She didn’t care if she made people angry though, or if she scared them, so even though people thought it dangerous, she learned to take care of the sick.  Even though people thought it mad, she healed the injured with plants and honey and other natural things.  She was so good at it that people called her a witch, and even that she chose to ignore.

“One day, when she was out searching for herbs, however, she got lost, though she thought she knew the woods as well as she knew her own house.  She wandered for what seemed like two hundred years, but she could not find her way home, so she lay down and slept there in the woods.

“When she woke there was a beast with her- a bear the likes of which she had never seen.  He had a red mane and blue eyes and was taller than any man she had ever known.  The witch was sore afraid, but she saw that he was injured and, being a kind woman and a healer, could do nothing but help him, and so she did.

“When the witch tried to leave the forest, however, the bear followed her, and when she got lost, still he stayed with her, and when night fell, he laid down beside her to keep her warm.  This went on for many days for the witch was very lost, and she came to rely on the bear who would catch food for her to roast over her fire at night and who always seemed to listen when she talked of how strange people thought her and how out of place she felt at home.

“One night, the bear woke to the witch’s screams to find that they were being menaced by a pack of wolves.  He roared and fought them, keeping them away from the witch, keeping her safe.  He killed them all and then, when they thought everything was safe, a snake bit the bear, and the witch had to use her healing to save him.  And so they saved each other that night.

“After time, as time goes, they did finally find the witch’s old home and were forced to part from each other, though the witch knew that she would never forget the bear who had been so good to her and kept her so safe.

“Time moved forward as time does, and the witch always wondered about her bear who she had loved so much.  She would look to the forest and think that she saw a flash of red fur, but it was never there when she looked a second time.

“Her time in the forest made the other people even more afraid of her than they had been before.  They thought she must only have survived by making a pact with the faeries, a very dangerous thing to do.  In spite of the fact that she could heal even better than before, they were afraid and were cruel to her, and she missed her bear desperately.

“One spring, the trees in the forest did not leaf out as they were supposed to.  It seemed that the forest had died.  The people all whispered that the spirit of the forest must have been killed- the harvests had been smaller and smaller every year and the forest grew darker and more twisted.  Now it seemed that it would die.

“The witch, fearing for her bear and having nothing to hold her to the world, returned to the forest to find him.  She did, lying in a clearing where first they had met, weak with loneliness and despair.

“The witch wept over him for she loved the bear more than she loved any person in the world, and her tears not only revived her bear but transformed him into the man he was.  As kind and gentle and brave and fierce as ever the bear had been.  And the witch and her bear lived together happy ever after.”

Brianna sighed and prayed it was true.

~?~?~?~?~

Jamie and I flew down the hill toward the family at the bottom, shouting their names.

“Brianna, Roger!” I called.

“Jemmy, Mandy!” cried Jamie.

And then we fell together, laughing and hugging and desperately happy.

It took some minutes for me to realize that there was a small individual tugging at my skirt, looking up at me from a curly mop of hair out of green eyes that I knew very well indeed.

“You’re the witch, aren’t you?” she asked.

I was shocked.  “I…” I began, unsure how exactly to answer that, and making Jamie chuckle low in his chest.

This brought wee Mandy’s attention to him, and suddenly she was hidden behind me, clutching my skirts around her.

“The bear!” she said, sounding terrified.

“I told you you shouldn’t have made him a monster,” Roger said to Bree, as though this were a common argument that meant anything at all.

“He wasn’t a monster, darling,” Brianna said, directing the statement at both daughter and husband.  “Don’t you remember?  He only  _looked_  like a bear.  He was actually a man.”

She scooped her daughter up to be able to see her grandfather’s face more clearly.

Mandy still looked unconvinced and leaned out of her mother’s arms toward me.  I gathered her up into my own arms willingly, and she hid her face against my shoulder, only peeking at Jamie out of the corner of her eye.

“Faerie tales?” I asked Bree, surprised.

“Of course.  Only in mine, they always end up happy ever after.”


	5. Chapter 5

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Imagine Claire arriving the day of Jamie's wedding to Laoghaire.

It was two-hundred years ago, I dreamed.  It is always two hundred years in my dreams.

I was a creature of the sea, both woman and fish, breathing the briny water like air.  I knew of the land above me, the cold rocks and grey skies, but I cared little for it, safe below the waves.  Content in the world that I knew.

Then came a storm that swept me away from all that I knew and loved and all that kept me safe.  Away from soft sand and waving kelp.  Up to the unforgiving rocks and the crashing surf and the cold, cruel wind.

With my first gulp of air, my fin vanished, and with it my tongue and, for the first time in my life, the water was not my home.  I was swept onto the shore, dashed against the rocks by the uncaring sea.

There was a man there on the shore.  He was hurt more than I, so I went to him and healed him as best I could, for there was nothing else for me to do, naked and unable to speak.  He was grateful to me and took me into his care, taught me to walk on the uneven ground, to breathe the bitter air, to eat the strange food.

He gave me shelter from the storms and told me stories for I could tell him none.  He cared for me, took me to his bed and, I think, loved me.  I know that I loved him, more than anything in the world, even the sea, for he had saved me and kept me safe.  He had been the only thing to stop me drowning in the air.

But the sea and the wind are fickle things, and I was blown away from him again, back to the cold currents off the shore.  I regained my fin, but not my tongue, and was never able to speak of what had happened to me on the land, nor to ask to return.  Though I was in the water again, I was not home, not truly, for my heart and soul belonged with the man in the air.

I would rise from the water every day, hoping to see him, hoping that he could save me from the vicissitudes of the sea.  One day I rose and saw him on the shore and I went to him, but he did not see me.  He was there with a woman who was not me- she had long blonde hair and a pretty face, and legs that were her own.  She breathed the air as though born to it, and she wore a ring that he placed on her hand and kissed him, and I knew that she was his.

I blinked awake, the dim grey light of dawn making the bedroom that I shared with Frank seem less real than my dream which remained crystal clear for one moment, like a raindrop hanging from the end of a leaf.  Then it slipped away, as dreams always do, like water from a cupped hand leaving me feeling peculiarly weightless, like the sea foam to be blown away by an errant breeze.


	6. Chapter 6

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Upon returning to Fraser's Ridge, Jemmy has horrible nightmares about the stones and only his grandfather can comfort him.

“It was two hundred years ago,” he said in that lilting way of his.  It is, after all, always two hundred years in the old tales.

“There came once a woman who had been cursed by the faeries to tell naught but the truth.

“None could say, had she been a changeling and raised among the Auld Ones, or had she been stolen as a child.  She was verra beautiful, so perhaps the Fair Folk had seen her and been jealous enough to steal her away into their kingdoms, perhaps to thwart her lovers or to deprive the world of men of her loveliness.

“It matters little, for she returned to the world of men with the gift and the curse that if she said a thing, it happened.  If she said that a man with an injury would sicken and die, he did so.  If she said that a child who seemed ill unto death would not die, he didna.

“If she said that war would come, it came.

“Some folk loved her, but most hated her for the truth is a dangerous and beautiful thing, balach ruaidh, and most fear it.

“She had a husband, and he loved her dearly, for he knew when she told him that she loved him that she truly meant it, though not all women do.  

“She told him, however, that a war was coming and if it couldna be stopped, he would die.  They were both sore afraid for nothing that she had ever said had not come to pass, but still they knew that they could not fail to try to save themselves and their country.  Try as they might, however, war came, and her husband knew that she couldna stay with him.

“She offered to stay- to die at his side- but before he could agree, she said that she would have his baby, and they both knew that it must come to pass.

“Her husband took her to a faerie glen and bade her say that she would return to the faeries, and so she did.

“War came, and as she had predicted, her husband fought.  As it happened, though he was sorely injured and thought for sure he was dead, he didna die, though his wife had said that he would.

“This relieved his wife of both her curse and her blessing from the faeries and she was able to return to her husband, though time being what it is in the court of the Sith, she and her husband were much older and their bairn was a woman in her own right.”

Jemmy had fallen asleep against his grandfather’s side as Jamie spoke to him. He always did- even when he’d been tiny, Jamie’s stories had been the only sure way for him to fall right asleep.

“He thinks me rather dull, I’d say,” Jamie would tell us with his self-deprecating humour.

I crossed the room with two mugs of tea and handed one to Jamie, then sat on his other side and leaned into him, as Jemmy was doing.

“And the woman who could say naught but the truth and her husband and their children and their children’s children lived happy ever after, even to the end of their days.”

“Oh aye, Sassenach,” Jamie said, wrapping an arm around me and nuzzling into my hair.  “So they did.  But not yet.”


	7. Chapter 7

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> I remember in the first book there's one point where Jamie wakes up from a nightmare about Claire being lost and he couldn't find her I thought that would make a sweet story when told from his POV

“It was two hundred years ago,” his mother’s voice seemed to echo in his dream.  It was always two hundred years when she told him tales.

“There was, in that time, a lad who was braw and bonnie and canty and strong, but as poor as a mite for all of that.

“And there was, in that time, a lass who was as beautiful as an angel, with a quick tongue and a sharp eye, the daughter of a lord.

“The lad had loved the lass since first he had laid eyes upon her, but the lass did not know the lad and was courted often by rich young men who, while not as bonnie nor as brave as the lad in the village, could offer the lass wealth and comfort to make up for their other deficiencies.

“The lad, being young and in love, but knowing little of those things which light a woman’s heart to flame, went out into the world to seek his fortune, thinking that the lass would love him if he too could offer her the comforts that money could buy.

“He returned after some years without gold, but richer by far in experience and ready to claim his lady love, only to find that she was to be wed to another man, and not just any man: the prince of the realm.  The lad despaired for his heart for it was clear that the prince loved his prospective bride dearly and she too seemed fond of the prince.  He dressed her in gold and silks and she was more beautiful than any woman in the land.

“The bonnie lad was not the only one to see how the prince doted upon his bride and there came a day that she was stolen by men hoping to see the kingdom fall as the prince mourned his love.

“The prince had a kingdom to oversee and could not follow his bride, but the lad, who had no kingdom, could.  He followed the trail of the bandits and, one by one, he defeated them.

“When one bandit might have cut her throat, the lad bested him with a sword.  When the next bandit might have crushed her head, the lad bested him with strength.  And when the final bandit might have poisoned her, the lad used his wits to save her and himself from death.

“The lass was pleased to be free of her captors and impressed with the lad’s strength, skill, and cleverness.  Her fiance was strong, but not nearly as strong as this lad.  He was good with a sword, but this lad was a master.  He was clever, but he would never have had the wit to save the both of them.  The lass knew that, had it been the prince who had come after her, she would have died.

“She was loyal, however, this lass, and had pledged her troth to the prince, so the lad agreed to help her return to the castle.

“As they traveled, the lass began to learn the value of freedom that her escort offered her.  She knew that she was safe behind the walls of her prince’s castle, but as the queen, she would not be allowed to leave those walls for fear that she would be kidnapped again.

“The lad was gentle to her, and spoke to her of everything and nothing, though he never revealed that he had known her before she was a princess and that he loved her so desperately.  His kindness and attention began to break through the princess’ fear of the unknown and her thoughts of her fiancee, and in time she came to love him as well.

“The pair ran away together into the dangers of the unknown, swearing that they would stay together.  The lad had learned in the years that it was not gold and silver that made a woman love a man, but other, less obvious things.  These things he gave his love in abundance, and each day they came to love each other more.

“Time is a fickle thing, however, my lad, and they were eventually caught by the prince.  The prince, believing that the lad was his fiancee’s captor threatened to kill him to save his lady.

“The lass, desperate to save her beloved, agreed to go with the prince, leaving behind her love- alive, but heartbroken.”

_Jamie woke with a start, the image of his new wife riding away on a horse with a man who looked a great deal like Black Jack Randall fading from his mind._

_He turned over to see the humped shape and cloud of curly hair that proved his dream a lie._

_He had to see her, and pulled off the blankets to show her glowing pale form in the moonlight that streamed in from the windows.  The sound of her breathing soothed him as he watched her sleep._

_After a few minutes she woke and convinced him to return to her side, warm and safe.  Soothed from his dreams by the reality of her in his arms._

“It was two hundred years ago,” his dream said again.

“The lass quickly realized that she had made a mistake leaving her beloved, for she could not think anything but ill of her prince now that she had known the truth of love.  Finally she left his side to return to her lad.

“He had been through many things since she had gone, and the lass feared that he would no longer want her, but a love like theirs was not to be lightly taken, and he welcomed her back into his arms, for they were meant to be.”


End file.
